Crowdsourcing the Civil War

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Civil War, crowdsourcing, George Rable, magazines, news during the Civil War, newspapers, University of Alabama, video

In the video below, George Rable, University of Alabama history professor, discusses the sources of information that newspaper editors during the Civil War used for their reports about battles and the war in general.

One important source was letters from soldiers — a form of what we could call today crowdsourcing. This means using the accounts of participants at an event to construct an account of that event.

Crowdsourcing the Civil War from Jim Stovall on Vimeo.

This post was originally posted on JPROF.com and is used here with permission. George Rable is now retired from the University of Alabama.